Sophie looked at the giant eggshell rising around her, feeling a bit stunned.
Things had certainly taken a turn for the worse.
She hadn't even chipped away at the boss's HP yet. Why was he already using his ultimate?
Moreover, what confused Sophie even more was the hostility Bennis showed toward monsters in his speech.
Red Moon was a Galgame, after all. The background wasn't supposed to be this bitter or deep-seated; the overall style leaned toward being lighthearted.
Setting up a “The fire fades, but the lords go without thrones” vibe wouldn't exactly make it easy to fall in love, would it?
If one had to briefly summarize the relationship between monsters and humans in Red Moon...
The most extreme slogan from the radical factions of both sides would be:
“Humans should screw humans, and monsters should screw monsters.”
It was just about drawing a line.
Prohibiting cross-species reproduction.
That was all.
Aside from that, whether it was a succubus red-light district in a human town or a hero host club in the Demon King's castle, everything was quite normal.
The probability of encountering human enemies versus monster enemies in the wild was basically the same.
Otherwise, Hiso wouldn't have been able to run around everywhere while maintaining his vampire identity.
Sophie felt lost.
Had she really transmigrated into Red Moon?
Or had she ended up in a sequel made by the same company?
Sophie took a step forward.
Bennis took a step back while chanting his incantation.
As an excellent caster, he naturally maintained a certain distance from his enemy.
Seeing the scepter in Bennis's hand glow with magical light again, Sophie felt a headache coming on.
Her resurrection ability had been inverted into a core trait for gaining resources, so the opponent couldn't kill her no matter how he attacked.
With this, she could completely drain the mana of the Bishop in front of her.
The only problem was—
Sophie couldn't even beat a caster who was out of mana.
Unarmed damage was calculated as 1 + (Strength - 10). Sophie's current unarmed damage was -9.
One punch would actually heal the person for 9 HP.
Unless the opponent overexerted their mana and fainted, even if Bennis ran out of mana and came to fight her bare-handed, she wouldn't be his match.
She still lacked the stats.
Whoosh.
The magic beam hit its target without suspense.
Sophie exploded.
But she didn't explode into a mist of blood like before.
In the brief moment the intense light touched Sophie's body, her form burst apart like black fireworks, splitting directly into hundreds of tiny, thumb-sized, pitch-black bats with eerie, glowing red eyes.
With a scalp-numbing flutter of wings, these miniature creatures flapped their leathery wings in unison and scattered in all directions.
“Hmph, trying to flee?”
Bennis swung his scepter violently, and lightning crackled at its tip.
He had, of course, prepared area-of-effect spells.
“Chain Lightning!”
Dozens of wrist-thick, violent blue lightning bolts trailed long arcs of electricity, forming a dense web that struck toward the bat swarm in mid-air with the force of a thunderbolt.
However, at that critical moment.
These tiny bats demonstrated a breathtaking level of synchronization.
As if they had anticipated it, just before the lightning could touch them, the hundreds of tiny bats simultaneously folded their wings and abandoned their flight.
They didn't dodge in mid-air; instead, they fell straight down like dumplings, all landing with a series of thuds on the hard stone floor covered in silver sand.
The lethal Chain Lightning fired into the air missed completely, leaving nothing behind but a pungent smell of ozone, failing to singe even a single bat's fur.
Faced with this incredible sight, Bennis was stunned.
Vampires had this kind of combat style?
Ground-walking bats?!
Bats that don't fly, but walk?!
That wasn't all.
As if mocking him, the little bats on the ground didn't use their short, shriveled limbs to walk. They used their broad, black leathery wings to tightly wrap their tiny heads and bodies, forming perfectly round, solid meatballs.
Then, utilizing the momentum from their fall, these thousand-plus black spheres began to roll frantically across the ground.
Roll, roll, roll, roll...
The empty ritual hall was instantly filled with the eerie sound of something rubbing against the floor at high speed. The thousand bat-spheres were like black glass marbles scattered across the floor, rolling in all directions with a comical yet clearly targeted trajectory.
Even Bennis didn't know what to do for a moment.
Vampires were known for their speed; even a Low-tier Vampire's movement and flight speed far exceeded that of a human.
That woman was deliberately distracting him.
Was she preparing some kind of move?
Bennis took a defensive stance.
To prevent a sneak attack, he could only watch as those little black spheres rolled around on the ground.
Among them, one bat-sphere that was rolling the fastest and furthest made its way to the edge of the translucent magical barrier.
The moment it hit the dense wall of mana, the sphere stopped.
This served as a signal.
The other thousand miniature bats in the hall instantly turned into black smoke and vanished without a trace.
In the next second, the dissipating black smoke reconvened around the furthest bat-sphere.
Accompanied by the creaking sound of bone restructuring and flesh growth, the beautiful silver-haired, red-eyed girl reappeared.
However, her posture looked a bit ridiculous.
The position Sophie chose for her reconstruction was too close to the edge of the barrier.
This resulted in her body, after half-recovering, becoming stuck in place.
Her upper body was wedged inside the translucent magical barrier, while her lower body from the thighs down was completely submerged in the hard stone floor, as if she had been cut into three sections.
For a normal person, such a gruesome physical bisection would be no different from being dismembered.
But there was no panic on Sophie's face.
She calmly curled her lips and gave Bennis a bright, mocking smile.
Then.
She opened the system menu that only she could see.
She opened the testing features.
And clicked 【Unstuck】.
With a soft whoosh, the figure abruptly vanished from where she stood.
No mana fluctuations.
No flash from a teleportation circle.
And certainly no chain reaction from a destroyed magical barrier.
Before Bennis's stunned eyes.
Sophie appeared outside the Moon's Cage.
When a player became physically stuck in the game and couldn't teleport, they were allowed to use this button to shift one position away.
System Power.jpg.
Sophie locked eyes with Bennis, who was still inside the barrier.
A skill of the Moon's Cage's caliber couldn't even be canceled by the caster himself.
It should keep this boss trapped for quite a while.
It was just her method of escape...
Bats that could only roll on the ground because her Agility was too low to fly.
It was too humiliating.
A gentleman's revenge is never too late even after ten years; now was the time for a strategic withdrawal.
I can't beat you now.
Just like the protagonist of a novel—if you can't beat the boss in the first ten chapters, why not wait until chapter fifty?
Sophie had just turned around to flee.
But she suddenly realized that someone had appeared beside her without her noticing.
A yellow-haired girl dressed in a nun's habit was currently half-squatting on the ground, holding a giant scythe that was much taller than she was.
Kaila? When did she get here?
Neither she nor Bennis seemed to have noticed her presence just now.
“I originally... wanted to save you.”
“But you got out yourself.”
“Wait a moment.”
Kaila tilted her head slightly.
Then.
She pointed the scythe in her hand toward Bennis, who was still inside the Moon's Cage.
She swung it upward from below.
“【Judgment】.”
Endless light flooded Sophie's vision.
Rate on N.U.
